So many weapon-toting action figures, so many cloying ponies, so much begging. And that's before I've started pondering the state of a culture whose toys are so gender-biased that the only female character I can find for my "Star Wars"-loving kids is a Princess Leia slave doll, complete with a chain around her neck.

Lego's Research Institute, had I been able to find one, would have improved my mood. Created by Swedish geoscientist Ellen Kooijman, the set features paleontologist, astronomer and chemist minifigures, all of whom happen to be female.

A laboratory, to a lot of parents, feels like an improvement — or, at least, a welcome addition to the mix.

"If I'm a 7- or 8-year-old standing in front of the Research Institute set, I think, 'Girls are smart. Girls are cool,' as opposed to, 'Girls like to go to the hair salon,'" says Melissa Atkins Wardy, author of "Redefining Girly: How Parents Can Fight the Stereotyping and Sexualizing of Girlhood, from Birth to Tween" (Chicago Review Press). "I might even think, 'I want to be all of those things.'

"But when that box isn't there, the thought isn't there," Wardy says. "You can't be what you can't see."

Well, that box is no longer there. The sets, priced at $19.99, sold out on Lego's website and in toy stores in a matter of days, and a Lego spokesman told The New York Times that's it: Like other fan-sourced Lego sets ("Back to the Future" and "Ghostbusters" sets, for example), the Research Institute was a limited-edition item.

"Lego could have done so much good with this line," Wardy says. "At what point do you consider how much influence you have and exercise your social responsibility? At what point do you say, 'Here's what I'm going to do with this platform?' Instead, they're saying, 'We gave you what you want. Now shut up and go away.'"

Wardy, who founded Pigtail Pals and Ballcap Buddies to combat some of the gender stereotyping in kids apparel, isn't going away. She launched a petition on change.org asking Lego executives to offer a permanent line of empowered female minifigures.

"A large section of Lego's customer base have used their voices and wallets consistently for three years to communicate they are wanting, ready for, and will purchase sets like the sold-out Lego Ideas Research Institute featuring three female scientists," it reads. "Please change this 'limited edition' set into a Lego mainstay."

Slightly more than 1,400 people have signed as of Wednesday.

"It's not a girls' issue," Wardy told me. "It's a people issue. My son and daughter both have every right to see females in STEM fields doing important work."

And we have every right to direct our dollars toward toys that help make that happen.